


Thanks To You I Am Not Myself

by pickapersonality



Category: All Time Low (Band)
Genre: + sadness, Angst, Band Break Up, I’m so sorry, M/M, Post-Break Up, dont worry i hate me too, there’s a lot of anger and confusion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-04
Updated: 2018-11-04
Packaged: 2019-08-17 13:05:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16517012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pickapersonality/pseuds/pickapersonality
Summary: “You think I know what I’m doing?”Alex stares down into the cold gold of his whiskey and swallows hard. The ache doesn’t slide down smooth like the drink did. “I was under the impression that you knew exactly what you were doing.”-Alex can’t move on from any of it - the breakup, the confusion, or Jack. Maybe they’re all one in the same.





	Thanks To You I Am Not Myself

**Author's Note:**

> So, I’m very sorry. This is a pile of sadness, but by now I think we’ve established that I have two modes: sickeningly sweet fluff and HURT. But, hopefully, it’s good enough to make you sad, so, um… enjoy? 
> 
> Title taken from “Thanks To You” by All Time Low.

Alex slams the car door shut with a heavy tug in his arm and heart, as the glowing lights of the bar spill out from the windows to the damp asphalt of the parking lot. It washes the tarmac over in soft yellow, glinting off of recent puddles and denying the cold of the night air as Alex’s breath hits it in a cloud of white mist. 

He came here because he knew nobody would care that he came here. Baltimore is an easier place to hide than L.A, even if the band you’ve been a part of for well over a decade was made from these streets. Less glitz, glamour, grime; he came here to fade away. 

Thoughts don’t get anyone anywhere, if they’re of the lamenting kind. He tucks that message into his mind, and crosses the parking lot with hands buried in his jacket’s pockets, rose safely obscured. He’s sick of people asking about it, asking what the initials mean, asking if it hurt, asking whether Jack held his other hand when he got it inked. 

The bar is quiet. It’s early December, a bitter Tuesday night, so Alex isn’t surprised. He’s thankful to see a lack of younger women, who would be most likely to recognise him. Avoiding all fans has proved difficult, but he’s managing. If he could, he’d hide away in his house until the world forgot that a pop-punk band called All Time Low had ever existed. 

The bartender barely looks at him as he slides over the whiskey Alex requests, dusty glass over the ever-slightly-sticky bar. He eyes the amber liquid warily, before raising glass to mouth and letting it burn its way down his throat. 

He’s been doing this a lot lately, coming to random bars and sitting, drinking to the brink - he’s not about to fuck up any more lives by drink driving - of drunk, driving home and falling asleep into another glass in the safety of his own home. 

The drink always makes him think of Jack, Jack on all the Warped tours and how he would drink, drink, drink, and then kiss Alex with all tongue and teeth until Alex was drunk from Jack’s mouth. Jack, the eternal Dionysus who would pour himself over Alex in the darkness of the tour bus, when Rian and Zack were out somewhere and the air would be quiet if not for their intermingled pants and moans. 

Alex drinks more and tells himself that the ache in his throat is the alcohol. 

He almost doesn’t register the voice at first. It’s like white noise to him, just another bar patron whose voice has faded to hum. Then, he sees a golden-tanned arm laid across the wooden bar, hand and fingers with callouses. That alone would be dismissible, but Alex knows how those fingers got those marks. The guitar was in his garage up until that day, two weeks ago, when it all came to a head. 

“Alex?” 

The last time Alex heard his name coated in that voice, it was the rawest, barest yell he’s ever heard. Now, it’s honey-slick; not soft, but carefully smooth. 

What does he say to that? To his name, spoken by his best friend, lover, bandmate of fifteen years, and stranger of two weeks? 

“Hello, Jack.” He manages to turn his head and look at the guitarist - ex-guitarist, unless Jack has found another band impossibly fast - without meeting his eyes, which he knows will be a gleaming gold in the dimmed lights. He feels that hateful twinge in his stomach- he hates that he knows this, hates how vulnerable he is before Jack. 

“That’s all I get?” Jack’s voice rises. Alex still doesn’t meet his eyes. “Two fucking weeks. And you say nothing.” 

“What do you want me to say?” Alex can feel the ache in his throat, and this time it’s too strong to blame on the glass he clutches. “What do you want me to? I- I don’t know what to say. Do. What do you want me to do?” 

“You think I know what I’m doing?” 

Alex stares down into the cold gold of his whiskey and swallows hard. The ache doesn’t slide down smooth like the drink did. “I was under the impression that you knew exactly what you were doing.” 

He doesn’t need to look up to know that Jack’s bristling, like a thistle readying its spikes against a finger brushed by. 

“Don’t blame any of this on me.” 

“It’s all on you, Jack,” and Alex can finally look up, and pin those golden eyes with his own. For the first time in two weeks, he’s feeling something other than the numb ache. “You were the one who wanted to break up the band. I remember you saying it to me. Hell,” he laughs, short and bitter, revelling as Jack recoils in an almost invisible movement,” you screamed it at me. In my face.” 

Jack looks like he wants to do it again, wants to yell and shout and scream until tears run down both of their faces. But instead, he sighs so deeply Alex is sure he hears ribs contract around lungs, and looks at Alex sadly. 

“Fuck you, Alex Gaskarth.” 

And he turns, converse padding over the carpet - Alex bought him those converse, threw them at his head on a tour bus with a “fucking throw away those sneakers you puked on” - and is out of the door, gone like a ghost into the night. The door slides shut, and Alex’s vision blurs as he stares at the splattered reflection of lights in the glass. 

// 

 

A week later, Alex is standing in front of his kitchen counter, staring at the calendar hanging on the wall above. It’s plain, white, with pictures of cute puppies because Ashley knew he missed the dogs on tour, when he took the calendar and put it by the bus door. Right now, they’re asleep, curled up in their beds, and the house is piercingly silent. 

He’s staring because for the first time in a decade, there’s nothing marked in any of the little white boxes. His life waits before him, empty and pale and blank. 

He turns shakily, trying not to let a shudder of breath escape him - he’s fine, he’s happy, this is what he wanted. He wanted a life back, a life away from the road and the warm, cramped bus, away from the buzz and the noise and the screaming of the fans every night. Screaming his name, so that he never had to doubt it any more. There’s no one here to scream it now. 

The moonlight streams through the glass doors that lead out onto the small patio. It paints streaks of silver across the wooden kitchen floor, turning honey to grey. His guitar stands against the wall. The light picks up every mote of dust dancing through the empty space, clinging to the instrument. 

Alex moves faster than his mind can. With a tremor in his hands that reaches his lungs as he lets out that shuddering gasp, with a heaving sob that rips all the air from his chest, he grasps the neck of the guitar, lifting it from the ground. 

He remembers wanting to do this before, with a guitar that he hated oh-so-much. It was fucking annoying, never quite sounded right, played badly - just a shitty instrument. But he didn’t. He passed it out, on the last night of tour, and handed it to a girl in the crowd with a black tank top and the biggest grin Alex thinks he’s ever seen on someone’s face. He’d seen the joy light up in her eyes, as the confetti rained down on them both, and felt so goddamn happy that he’d chosen to do what he did. 

Right now, he doesn’t want to feel happy. He wants to rip his heart from his chest with his bare hands, so that this terrible turn of events and spiralling descent of choices can be undone. So he raised the guitar, arms trembling, and brings it down on the wooden floor with all the strength he can summon. 

It goes everywhere. The sand-coloured body splinters and shatters and bursts open, pieces flying while strings snap. He does it again and again, eyes streaming and hair in them and a tremble in his panting breaths, until he’s just holding the neck. He drops it suddenly, and it crashes down. Then, the house is silent. 

The floor is covered in pieces of wood and string. His foot shifts, and slides over splinters. 

In the other room, he hears Peyton starting to bark, short and sharp. He looks out over the mess, staring at nothing in particular, and feels curiously empty. 

// 

In the end, Jack shows up on his doorstep. 

Alex answers the door, expecting the postman and hoping that he doesn’t notice that Alex looks like he’s been crying again. When he sees the silver-bleached hair and ripped jeans - how is Jack still Jack, how is he still living like he did before - he almost slams the door in his face. 

The only reason he doesn’t is because Jack shoves his foot in the gap. Alex is thankful; it saves him from regretting letting Jack go again for days, and hating himself for regretting it. 

“You’ve got to fucking talk to me,” Jack starts. His voice is frustrated already, reminds Alex of how he’d sound when a demo they’d been proud of didn’t end up sounding quite right. “This is pathetic. Zack’s in Canada right now.” 

“Why the fuck is Zack in Canada?” Alex blurts out, before he can stop himself. Self-hatred is so normal these days that he barely registers the pulsing spike as it hits him. 

Jack scrubs a hand through his hair. The gesture is horribly familiar and comforting. Alex’s stomach twists. “He wanted to see the duck. The giant duck. The band was a lifeline and we’re all lost at sea now. Or some shit.” 

Alex catches himself before he allows his face to break into a smile. He’s not even sure he remembers how to smile. “You been writing lyrics? Moving on already?” He loves how snarky and bitter his voice sounds. He hates it. 

Jack just shakes his head tiredly. “Let me in, Alex.” 

Alex does. 

Jack doesn’t even react when he sees the mess that was the acoustic still scattered across the kitchen floor. Alex has moved a little, kicked it over so that he could get the the coffee machine. Jack’s shoes crunch over a pile of honey-jagged edges. 

“Why?” Alex asks, deciding inwardly that all build-up has already been done. He remembers the screaming at each other, the rawness of his throat and eyes, and cringes. 

Jack scoffs. “Yeah, why, Alex?” 

“It’s not my fault that the band is-“ Alex pauses, and tried to re-work his voice into something a little less vulnerable. “It’s not my fault that the band is done.” 

“You know who’s fault it’s not?” Jack stands in a half-defeated way, hip against the edge of the counter and hand resting. “It’s not Rian’s fault. He sent me some drum patterns he’d been working on. Said he didn’t think he was gonna join another band, that I’d probably benefit more from them.” 

Alex winces, pain and regret like ice through his chest. It spreads through his rib cage like fire. “Stop.” 

“Zack’s in Canada.” Jack doesn’t seem to have heard Alex. “Watching a giant yellow duck and trying to process. I don’t think it’s his fault that this happened.” 

“Did you come here to blame me again?” Alex is so, so tired. 

“I came here because I’m sick of torturing myself and thought torturing you too might help.” Jack raises his eyes from the floor to Alex’s. “We’ve broken the best thing in our lives and all we can do is try to break each other.” 

Alex pauses, mind whirring, and then - “Do you want a drink?” 

Jack shakes his head. “I’ve drunk way too much since.” He doesn’t have to finish. 

“What do you want me to do?” Alex is defeated and desperate, and it’s all the worse because he’s simply accepted it. His stomach is cold and it spreads down his limbs like an icy slew of blood and frost. “Please tell me because I don’t fucking know what to do. I don’t know what to do and I don’t know what I’m doing.” 

“You’re destroying yourself.” The reply is so short and sharp that it makes Alex gasp, chest rising and falling jaggedly. “But so am I. Let’s destroy each other.” 

Alex doesn’t bother asking again, just turns and opens the cupboard behind his head, and draws out the half-empty bottle of Jack Daniels - what they always drank on tour; he’d bought it to do as Jack said: destroy himself a little more. Then, two glasses, and he fills them to the brim, hands shaking less as he carries out the familiar movements. 

Jack accepts the glass without comment. Alex slides down against the cupboards until he’s sat, and drops his head back, hitting the wood with a dull thump. Jack follows, back against the opposite cabinets. 

They drink for far too long without a gap. 

It’s strange and weird and wonderful in a horribly twisted way, Alex thinks, as he watches the line of Jack’s throat move as he swallows. How after all the screaming and shouting and sobbing, they end up here, in the soft golden light streaming through the glass doors, illuminating the broken guitar and glancing off of the golden whisky in Jack’s glass. When he thinks about it for a little too long, the drink burns and his stomach twists. 

“I hate you,” he says, tired beyond tired and sick of screaming it. His own voice sounds wrecked to his ears, and the way Jack just shrugs, placing his empty glass on the floor beside him, makes it seem endlessly pathetic. He’s pathetic. 

“Can’t hate me more than I hate myself.” Jack’s head falls back against the cabinets, but he keeps Alex’s gaze steadily. His hair is silver and his skin is golden, eyes glowing like hot coals. He’s always been beautiful, at least to Alex, but now he looks dangerously so, all black ripped denim and sloping line of defined shoulder that Alex knows would be taut under his touch. Alex’s thoughts are all like loose threads, spinning out over the wooden floor and between his fingers, out of control. They weave their way around Jack before he can stop them. 

“Why? You been lonely without me?” Alex knows the question is cruel, knows how cold his voice is, and yet he can’t bring himself to stop it escaping. “Or is it just the career decisions?” 

“You know the band was always the single most important thing in my life,” Jack bites back, holding Alex’s eyes with a sharp glare. “You fucking know that.” 

“It never was me,” Alex replies bitterly, not even trying to stop the ice creeping into his voice. “Of any of those girls and guys you fucked in your hotel rooms when you were mad at me, when I could hear you moaning like they were the best things you’d ever found.” 

“Like you ever were better than me,” Jack snaps back. “You’d ignore me for days. It was like I wasn’t in the band when you were angry with me, like I was just some touring groupie or shit. Everything always had to revolve around you. Centre of the fucking universe.” 

“I wasn’t the centre of yours,” he says, and it sounds pathetic and small and bitter, but these are words of years ago that he has had to say ever since and he’s not stopping now. “So it doesn’t fucking matter. Did you ever even care about me, the one that wasn’t the singing song-making machine that made you famous?” His voice rises as he speaks, until he’s yelling, voice cracking as he drops his glass on the floor, and it rolls away, empty. “Did you ever care?” 

“No,” Jack yells back, and he’s getting to his feet and so is Alex, hands clutching edges of countertops and Jack in his face, two inches away and the bittersweet tang of whisky washing over him. “What if? What if I never fucking did?” 

“Then you’re just as bad as I always wanted you to be,” Alex screams, voice raw and chest heaving. He gasps on inhale, breath ragged, and his eyes dart to Jack’s lips just as the guitarist catches his own. 

Jack pushes him back against the counters, hands running up his chest and over his shoulders and up into his hair, tugging and grabbing as Alex grabs at Jack’s sides, hands sliding into place on his hipbones like they always did. He kisses without affection, biting at Jack’s mouth like he’s searching for the last of the guitarist’s sanity just to lick it out. 

Jack tugs on his hair, pulling him impossibly close and pushing him back sharply, until they touch completely and Alex can feel the heat of alcohol and afternoon radiating from Jack’s skin. He wants to bask in it and corrupt it all in one, wants to freeze Jack over with his own numbing chill, wants to press his loneliness onto Jack’s lips and show him how it’s all his fault. All his fault except for how it’s all Alex’s fault. 

Jack groans deep from the back of his throat, and Alex swallows the sound. Then, Jack pushes away all of a sudden, propelling himself off of Alex’s shoulders and leaving him unsteady against the counter. Jack breathes heavily, pants shaky and eyes darkened when Alex meets them defiantly. 

“We can’t do this,” Jack says, voice low and wrecked; Alex feels a gleeful ballon of pride explode in his chest. “We said we’d stop. We- this is the worst time.” 

“Why not?” Alex knows he sounds pathetic, whiny, small. He feels it hot on the back of his neck, before remembering that nothing matters anymore. “Why did we stop?” 

Jack looks at him wildly, like Alex has gone insane but maybe he has too. It’s the first time since Jack walked through his door that Alex feels remotely scared. “We stopped because you told me I wasn’t what you wanted. I was passing time. You wrote a fucking album about why we stopped.” Jack smirks, and aims. “Most would say the best album you ever wrote. And it was about me.” 

Alex deflects; it’s always been one of his strengths. “And you never tried to tell me I was wrong.” 

“And you never fucking listened to me when I tried!” 

“I didn’t want to!” 

They both stop, mouths shut, and pant-filled silence splits across the space between them. Jack looks wild, Alex knows he looks broken. Then, Jack looks down, clenches a fist, and looks back up again. 

“Fine. Let’s go have angry sex, fuck each other up some more. Then in the morning you can never see me again or…” He trails off, and looks unbearably lost there, against Alex’s kitchen wall in the waning afternoon light. “I don’t know. I- I don’t know.” 

Alex moves in, and tastes the words still on Jack’s lips. I don’t know. He doesn’t know. Alex doesn’t know. 

After all, he muses bitterly, as Jack’s hands find their way under his shirt and around his heart, they’ve never known anything at all.


End file.
